Hindi
UAE to play host to second edition of SIIM Awards
NEW DELHI: The second South Indian International Movie Awards (SIIMA) is to be held at the Sharjah Expo Centre on 12 and 13 September this year.
Actress Shriya Saran, along with Rana Daggubati and Arya, announced at a press meet in Dubai that shortlisting of the best films of all South Indian languages – Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada – was in progress.
SIIMA has been instituted with the aim of creating a global platform for the South Indian film industry which releases over 500 films in a year and is one of the largest in the world.
SIIMA founder and MD Vishnuvardhan Induri said: “SIIMA is a platform for South Indian Film industries to showcase their cinema to the world, SIIMA will travel to a different country every year and it will be a great platform for south Indian films to market and publicise their movies.”
Arya, Indian Tamil actor and co-host at SIIMA, said: “I am very excited to be a part of a function where South Indian cinema is presented on a global platform.”
The awards ceremony will be spread over two days. Day one will comprise the ‘Generation Next Awards Night’, and will be hosted by former Miss India World and actress Parvathy Omanakuttan, and co-hosted by stand-up comedian Ash Chandler. The ‘Popular Awards’ will be held on day two, and will be co-hosted by Arya, Shriya Saran, Rana Daggubati and Sonu Sood.
Shriya Saran, co-host at SIIMA said, “I am very excited to be a part of SIIMA. I had started my career with South Indian films so this industry is very close to my heart. I am really thrilled that I am co-hosting this prestigious award function and will be sharing the platform with three handsome co-anchors.”
The prestigious panel of experts at SIIMA have chosen the nominees of the awards, and the winners will be chosen by an online voting system.
Rana Daggubati, Indian actor and co-host at SIIMA said: “I am really looking forward to being with a room full of attractive, admired and extremely successful people from the South Indian film industry that are being honored for their artistic contribution. As the host, it will be a pleasure to ensure that amongst all the cheer, the stars have a good time, are thoroughly entertained, and cherish their moment of praise.”
The awards night will be packed with breath-taking acts and performances by some of the biggest stars in South Indian cinema.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
